Middle class Victorians tended to get a lot of mileage out of their peccadillos -- first, by having scruples before engaging in them, then by feeling guilty during the act itself, and finally by endless self-castigation and self-analysis afterward. In this costume romance, Isobel Heatherington has come to the countryside with her three daughters while her husband continues to attend to business in the City (London). She is persuaded to be a model in a painter's landscape scene, and before long she and the painter are having an affair. When her husband joins the scene, the affair ends, but jealous fellow that he is, he can't help but notice that both parties are behaving in a decidedly peculiar, guilt-ridden fashion.